Early touch fastener systems featured two mating tapes, each being knit or woven. One tape would include loops of filament woven into a base, and the other would include filaments woven to form loops and then cut to form hooks.
More recently, continuous molding of fastener elements extending from a common sheet-form resin base has resulted in less expensive and thinner hook fastener tapes. Significant improvements in this area include the development of continuous fastener tape molding using fixed mold cavities (see Fischer, U.S. Pat. No. 4,794,028). Further improvements have reduced the size of the fastener elements moldable by such techniques, to heights of 0.015 inch or less, which provide a very smooth touch when arranged in dense arrays.
As molded fastener tape has been improved to be more flexible and less expensive, it has found application in disposable garments, such as diapers. In typical diaper applications, a fastening tab is formed with a continuous strip of fastener tape, which includes lanes of hooks, laminated to the tab substrate.